"The trouble with a rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat" – Lily Tomlin

Things I’ve learned whiles editing

The past few days have given me a glimpse into what my life as a full time film/video editor is going to be like. Most of our second semester project work is done and has been left in the capable hands of the school’s editors, including yours truly.

The software I am currently using is Edius, not my preferred choice but I’m making do, and it seems pretty robust and reliable for the most part until it crashes after an AutoSave. I can’t complain too much since I got this copy for free.

The undo function.

I can’t count the number of times I had re-sized a shot on the Time Line I wasn’t meant to re-size or deleted one that wasn’t meant to be deleted because my touch pad was fucking up or I was awake at 3am when I should have been hugging my pillow tight, deep in sleep.

Manual Saving Vrs Auto Save.

Always save your work-in-progress manually and don’t rely too much on the software to do it for you. No matter how good the software might be it might miss some very crucial changes when it is in AutoSave mode and so take you back a couple of steps if you manage to recover your files after a crash.

Untrained students make terrible actors

No joke. Trust me when I tell you that you haven’t seen bad acting until you have seen a student production even when the takes are good ones. From missed lines to over the top acting to refusing to take instructions from the directors or the display of Diva-like attitude even though you are clearly not meant to be on screen.

Keeping awake

This is composed of a multitude of solutions from coffee to occasionally dipping feet into cold water whiles making sure you don’t short circuit the house by electrocuting yourself to standing up and stretching after every 2hours to watching porn…. scratch that, watching hard core porn with acrobatic porn actors to keep your interest piqued but without blowing one’s load. The aim here is not to fall asleep and you know after the release it is all downhill from there 🙂

Shortcuts

Knowing the shortcuts for performing various functions on a particular software is essential. Apart from cutting down time during the editing process, it also keeps both hands busy since mouse clicking involves the use of the dominant hand. This last tip comes from my fear of muscle atrophy so I try as much as possible to use the majority of my muscles all of the time 🙂